I've been getting shots of egrets lately. This one is a Snowy Egret (according to Wikipedia), with black bill and yellow feet (can't see them here). The orange/brown ploom occurs during mating. I don't know if it's male or female (it's supposed to be hard to tell the difference by apperance). Sorry, I don't get the ISO info from my D50 (Nikon says I need to use Nikon software -- not), but it was probably ISO 400.
1/500, f/8, 70-300mm VR @ 300mm

Hi markh. Thanks I am lucky to have a small park in my suburban California town that attracts a good variety of creatures -- I even spotted a river otter the other day. There are lots of ducks, geese, and gulls, turtles, and an occasional cormorant. I don't venture too far off though.

Nice capture Brian . Did you focus on the eyes like what was recommended by most books or just point and shoot once it comes in focus ?
I think I am the later , though I tried .. to focus on the heads now - more often than not.
At f8 the whole picture seems to be in focus .. have you got any bokeh like ?

Thanks David. The egret was 75ft to 100ft away so I was just hoping autofocus would figure things out. I always use spot metering and aim for the head, hoping as you suggest, to get the eye, or at least the head in the best focus. I shoot f/8 90 percent of the time -- the lens lends itself to it. While the DOF seems deep in these shots, I was shooting from about 10 above the subject which spread it somewhat. I've often had trouble keeping two objects in focus that are only a couple of feet apart. Here is another shot of another egret with a cormorant where the comorant is only slightly forward, but enough to be out of focus.

Sorry David, I know what you meant, I just got thinking in the wrong direction. I was looking over my photos and I don't have any good bokeh examples. I have a several pictures like this one, but the backdrop is at a distance. I've been concentrating so much on getting the whole subject in focus that I've been reluctant to go to a wider aperture. Also, I don't have the lens sorted out in terns of what works best at various distances yet. Thanks for making a point of that, I'll be thinking about bokeh next time I'm out